[LFH] Want to reduce number of tries before a new HC kill

Hello,

I am seeking advice regarding the number of tries my raid spends on before killing a new HC boss.

About my Raid:
We are a casual guild since 2005, and always had some sort of raiding. We are happy with our progress and the way we do it. Currently we are 4/16 hc (4 Mogu Bosses down) and raid on 2 evenings per night. Our comp is also quite good (Tanks: Warri, DK; Heal: Pala, Disc, Monk; Range: Mage, Mage, Shadow, Hunter, WL; Melee: Warri, Feral, Enhancer). The hunter is completely new and we are stll equipping him. Also one Mage was on a longer hiatus and still needs som items. The Monk rerolled from resto shaman and is also not part of the HC team now.

The issue:
We are needing a lot of tries before we actually down the boss. This results in less time for farming gear. We are still fine with our progress, but faster is always better. The team itself really takes it easy with the vast amount of wipes, so there is no motivation problem or any visible signs of frustration.

Yesterday we did Blade Lord Ta'yak for the 2nd time. In total we now have ~50 wipes on him, but we still didn't down him. We already had him around 5%, and the progression itself was seeable. We improved nearly with every try (Here is a log: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/q...=12197&e=12643). The thing is: How can we speed things a little bit up? I am always reading in the forums here, that ppl need about 10-25 tries for new bosses, for harder ones 30-50. We are way over these numbers.

So things I could think about:

ppl are not prepared: I encourage them to prepare the next hc boss. Post videos in our forums and collect advices from different forums.

DPS is weak: I dunno. I think they are quite ok/good. Also occasionally check WoL for uptimes of dots, buffs etc..

Doing to many mistakes: Maybe, don't know how to fix that. We are not going to remove anybody from our rooster, because of mistakes. We belong together ;-)

Weak raid leading: Trying to improve with every raid, even reading books about leadership..

You just have to cut out mistakes i only toke 3 min to look at your logs so i don not have a full answer for you on the last try the hunter and the other priest died from the dot and didn't use any defensive cooldowns if the paladin toke clemency that would help as well. Bladelord is just about keeping everyone alive really.

but how many trys other groups take to kill a boss shouldn't bother you to much every team is different

Well it's not now only about Blade Lord. I am sure we will down him next week. (Still thanks for the def cd tip for the hunter...) It's more about if we are doing something fundamentally wrong, and that's the reason why it takes us so long.

but how many trys other groups take to kill a boss shouldn't bother you to much every team is different

just not got the same players as other teams you are about the same maybe a bit less then in dps then my guild when we killed him you can kill him if keep everyone up it should be fine wiping is a part of raiding i just dont think you should worry to much about it it can be a tricky boss i would not be hard on anyone since you are a casual guild
Make sure at 11% all the dps and healers run down the side tho you will never make the seconded run back

Spend 20-30 minutes speaking to the group as a whole and explain your concerns and get feedback. Involve everyone; ask them if they want to speed it up. If it's just you trying to get everyone to play better, you'll have a hard time doing it whilst keeping everyone happy.

I agree with what was posted above, but what I really think is key is individual effort. People reading up on the fight, watching videos, looking through parses, even just reading the dungeon journal. DPS isn't an issue until you're consistently hitting enrage. Concentrate on doing the mechanics properly, and then you can attempt to maximize your dps.

Sha of Fear Melee hit You 372908 Physical. (766625 Overkill) (Critical)Begging us to buff is sometimes easier than trying to beat the boss.(Source)

I agree with what was posted above, but what I really think is key is individual effort. People reading up on the fight, watching videos, looking through parses, even just reading the dungeon journal. DPS isn't an issue until you're consistently hitting enrage. Concentrate on doing the mechanics properly, and then you can attempt to maximize your dps.

How can one get people to do that individual effort? Having some trouble here myself with people wasting the raids time by not spending 5 min looking up stuff.
Also why is it that "we" get a boss' tacktiks and execution pretty much down, but the boss dies much much later?
"This boss should have died one/two hours ago." is a pretty used phrase in our raids.

I'm curriouse what hints you will get, and it would be great if you would share the impact (altho I dont thing there is a general rule).

I can share my experiance with you that I had so far. For better understanding, IRL I have a small team of 5-6 people, so try to use my experience from work within the Guild. The problem is, there is a big gap between those two worlds. The main issue is motivation. And this is the question you should ask not only your self, but everyone (best would be to do it individualy). Ask your mates why the like to raid, what is theyr goal within it (even the most casual players have a goal in game). If you are so long together, most of you should incline to the same goal. After you spoke to everyone, get them together and tell them what steps are required to reach the goals. ( Read on mechanicks, read on strats, browse logs ect. ) And once you are on the same goal, dont hesitate to compliment those who go a bit further in order to get the raid further. Its free and it gets also the others rolling.

What you can do from the leader point of view. Try to tailor strats based on your comp. Its a bit more work and research, but its totally worth it.

Think it's pretty normal to have this number of attempts. Don't fall into the illusion that some progress guild needs a lot less tries to kill a boss. If they are in progress times, most of the progress guilds really raid A LOT like 10+ hours a day. They even wipe on bosses they had the first kill a long time ago. With two days it's hard to farm everything. I think here you should just have a decision: Do you want to kill as many bosses a possible before the next content starts, or do you want to go for maximum equip before the next content starts.
If you are at 4/16HC I assume you all have at least 490 ilvl. I think this is enough gear to clear all the content if you really go for it. Just think about the guys that cleared HoF heroic in week 4. I think they didn't have 490 ilvl back then.

My suggestion is also: Kill blade'lord, then wind'lord (not that hard on heroic) and spirit kings. Though a lot of people say that spirit kings is hard, I think now it's one of the easier hardmodes. The only really hard part where you need a little luck is when the first time the second guy spawns. Kill the first guy, don't fuck up the shields and it's nearly a kill.

Thanks you for the massive response. Initially I though a little bit the response would be more like "Your DPS sucks!". I really enjoy people here, which have the same issues and particularly the same mindset on the game, guild and raidleading.

Until now a mix of your suggestions is on my todo list:
1) Speak the whole team (~20 min) what they want. What their goal is, and what OUR goal is. Should we try to get the best possible gear? Do we want to be as fast possible with progress?
2)Encourage ppl even more to look into their specific class abilities for a specific boss (Glyphes, tipps, videos, forums... - More down below)

@Karlzone:
(Details for Part 2)
What I do (Partly going to do)..
1st: In every raid invite I write at least 2 days before what we are going to do. Let's say we do Boss X on hc, which we haven't tried before. Something like: "Blade Lord Heroic - Please watch X video and inform yourself!".

2nd:
After every raid I tell people what were are going to do on the next raid day and ask them please to watch this and this and this (Same as above).

3rd:
For every hc Boss I open a thread in our forums with already linked videos, tipps, strats etc. I mark every tipp with an Icon (For Range, Melee, Tank, Heal or specific classes)

4th:
Keep on going encouraging them during/after/before raids to look up stuff or parses etc.

@Reflection:
Right now wie have around (at least) iLevel 495. Do you think that will be enough to do hcs only without farming gear anymore? My plan is to still clear ToE every ID (takes about 1 hour), but MGV and HoF only progressing (extending IDs..).
Also many thanks on your hint regarding progression order!

One more thing ... dont over do it. If people feel you push them too much it will have a bad effect. Try to play it more in the direction that they decide what are the next necessary steps. Make suggestions, agree on them within the guild and then distribute the work/responsibilities. It has two positive effects, it gets the people more involved and it lessens the pressure thats on you.

Right now wie have around (at least) iLevel 495. Do you think that will be enough to do hcs only without farming gear anymore? My plan is to still clear ToE every ID (takes about 1 hour), but MGV and HoF only progressing (extending IDs..).

Why on earth would you not clear those when your ilvl is actually lower than what HoF drops? Not to mention things like set bonuses, trinkets etc... you must be VERY lucky with drops if you don't need stuff in there at your level of progression.

Why on earth would you not clear those when your ilvl is actually lower than what HoF drops? Not to mention things like set bonuses, trinkets etc... you must be VERY lucky with drops if you don't need stuff in there at your level of progression.

I'd say: But is it worth it to clear the first 3 bosses before getting to a place where you actually need gear? Not to mention... can you one shot amber shaper and empress consistently? If the answer to that is no, I would just leave HoF alone. I don't think anybody likes that place anyways xD It's neither full of happyness (ToE) or makes me excited (MSV).

Thanks for the answers samsine. I do actually do some of these, but not all. I am sure I can find some improvements.

I just am wondering if the putting tactiks for other ppl on your forums doesn't hurt the group a bit as well? Not only does it cost you a load of time, but it also makes it so that people don't learn to put in the effort themselves.
That's when you end up on Feng HC and have to tell the hunter to spec into barrage for the adds, instead of him figuring out himself (True example).
Telling your mage to spec into greater invis for hc elegon (true example).
Telling your ele shaman to glyph lightning bolt for sha (True lol).
Or you need to tell your druid to spec out of nature's vigil for the debuff on amber-shaper (That's me, and I figured out after first try)
Does it not hurt the "selfthinking" part of your raiders if you start doing all that stuff for them?

I'd say: But is it worth it to clear the first 3 bosses before getting to a place where you actually need gear? Not to mention... can you one shot amber shaper and empress consistently? If the answer to that is no, I would just leave HoF alone. I don't think anybody likes that place anyways xD It's neither full of happyness (ToE) or makes me excited (MSV).

If my raid couldn't drop normal Amber-Shaper and Empress consistently then I wouldn't be worrying about Blade Lord HC, there are huge gear upgrades in there and leaving it alone is just stupid, especially when the guild's logs show that pretty much all of their dps are doing significantly less than they should be in the gear they already have. Once you get into the high 490s you should be reaching 100k or pushing above it, not herp derping around on 70-80.

As for your ideas of "selfthinking" (wut) it sounds like the sort of raid group that needs the leader to do that for them in order to get anything done ever, and if left alone they simply won't do it and you need a way to change that, not just stop doing it and let them wipe you over and over.

My advice would be to have some kind of exercise designed to see if they bother to read up or not, basically, tell them to prepare for a boss then when you start the raid, ask one random person (or the one you suspect is least likely to have done it) to explain the fight over vent. If he can't do it, yell at him and pick someone else, repeat until people either learn their lesson or quit because they can't be bothered.

1. Hey, A, you died there. What did you die to?
2. -Uhm, the dot.
3. How come you died to this dot? not enough healing you believe? Or did you forget to use a defensive cooldown which could've saved you?
4. -I guess I could've iceblocked it.
5. Okay, let's do that next time when you're about to die to it!

Stuff like that.
-Make sure people know why they died, what THEY could've done differently (even if it's not completely their fault, IF they could've saved themselves, the attempt would've still gone better).
-Make sure people know, and make a mental note, of how this won't happen again.
-Promote good behaviour. (Good job on that iceblock there!)
-Demotivate bad behaviour. (You really shouldn't have walked into that tornado!)

One more thing ... dont over do it. If people feel you push them too much it will have a bad effect. Try to play it more in the direction that they decide what are the next necessary steps. Make suggestions, agree on them within the guild and then distribute the work/responsibilities. It has two positive effects, it gets the people more involved and it lessens the pressure thats on you.

Good Input. That could also be a good approach for Karlzone to enforce selfthinking? I am trying to point to finger on the HOW... Probably with question like: What boss should we do next? Do you want a 3rd raid day? etc

Stuff like that.
-Make sure people know why they died, what THEY could've done differently (even if it's not completely their fault, IF they could've saved themselves, the attempt would've still gone better).
-Make sure people know, and make a mental note, of how this won't happen again.
-Promote good behaviour. (Good job on that iceblock there!)
-Demotivate bad behaviour. (You really shouldn't have walked into that tornado!)

Thanks.. I think the picture gets clearer and clearer with every answer. Road to success must be something like: Encouraging people to selftink. Don't assault people, instead praise people.
@CPtAwesome:
I think we have 2 completely different mentalities here. Just some examples (Doesn't mean others or you do that): I am happy when I can raid with the people I know for such a long time. In my guild nobody ever got kicked or will be kicked because of poor performance in raids. We finished every Meta-Raid-Achievement so far together.

Regarding DPS, I think they are quite ok/good. The one you saw is a wipe record, so dps will always be lower on wipes... You can see in the log, that in the begining everybody is able to pull around 200-250k DPS. Here is also another log (from a hc kill: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/w...?s=3556&e=4032).

1. Hey, A, you died there. What did you die to?
2. -Uhm, the dot.
3. How come you died to this dot? not enough healing you believe? Or did you forget to use a defensive cooldown which could've saved you?
4. -I guess I could've iceblocked it.
5. Okay, let's do that next time when you're about to die to it!

Stuff like that.
-Make sure people know why they died, what THEY could've done differently (even if it's not completely their fault, IF they could've saved themselves, the attempt would've still gone better).
-Make sure people know, and make a mental note, of how this won't happen again.
-Promote good behaviour. (Good job on that iceblock there!)
-Demotivate bad behaviour. (You really shouldn't have walked into that tornado!)

THIS is really good advice from a raid leader (or just feedback) perspective. There is a fine line between covering up for (obvious) failures on the part of one or more individuals, and going to the other end of the spectrum and shaming them publicly. Sometimes, each option be viable (i.e. to keep morale up or to really hammer home a point to someone not getting it, respectively), but this kind of "acknowledge the problem and dissect the cause to prevent recurrence" seems to work best for all involved.

When we learned HC Vizier, I think we must have put in almost 80 attempts. And probably 65 of those were people dying to the damn rings/orbs. I was livid (as I was tanking the 2nd platform, then staying there with the echo, so literally doing 3x the amount of rings of most people), and was having a hard time not just yelling at the people failing. But, once we broke down what was causing the issues (they were trying to follow some stupid video that wasn't accurate/correct), the problems stopped and we got the kill.

You never know why people do/don't do what they do unless you ask. And you also never know what they do/don't know about other options unless you present those.

Keep communication open, the kill will come.

Originally Posted by Malthanis

We'll all be appropriately shocked/amazed when Nairobi actually gets an avatar, but until then, let's try to not derail the thread heckling him about it.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

If it was that easy don't you think we would have figured that out? (Source)

'Selfthink' is overrated! The best way to get an average group through any encounter, in my opinion, is to keep it simple.

Explain to each individual person (or to each general role) what their job is, for as short a period of the fight as possible. I.E., for blade lord heroic, simply tell everyone to hug up, the melee to punch his face as on normal, the tanks to tank as normal, and the ranged to prioritize not hugging above everything else (but don't tell all of them this; tell the healers what their job is, the tanks what their job is, etc, not everyone what everyone's job is is my point... captain obvious right here). Tell people to just enable their auto-run the second he does his pull, and face the camera away from him (holding down right-click, obviously).

After everyone has gotten used to that, elaborate on stuff like, maybe the guy with the debuff shouldn't stack for cleave if you don't think he can live (if that is a problem), and suggest ways for that person to mitigate the damage (ice block for mages as soon as they get a debuff that will be followed by a cleave, bubble for paladins, shield wall for warriors, fortifying brew for monks, etc). Advice that the ranged should stay as close to him as they can without hugging, so that they'll have less distance to run when you need to hug, and so that they'll have less air-time when he pulls you in for his whirl (making it easier to get away from, as you can start running sooner).

Then, when you get to sub-50% and stuff gets a little more difficult, suggest cooldown rotations for dealing with the cleaves; ask your paladin (if you have one) to spec clemency, and time his two HoPs for what you think will be the last 2 cleaves (allowing everyone to stack safely for them); ask your disc priest to use his barrier early, so it's up for the last cleave as well; and so on.

I think it's a big mistake, at least initially, to tell everyone everything about the fight (tanks don't need to know what healers are doing, melee don't need to know what ranged are doing, etc; only if they get in each others way because they don't know what theo ther is doing is this important information, at least as you're learning the fight), and the worst mistake of all is to go into great detail explaining the entire fight right off the bat. Keep it as simple as possible initially, and provide more details (which are again role- or player-specific) as you get better at the fight.

I don't raid lead, because I don't have the mental fortitude, nor the personality, but this is what has always worked the best for any group I've been in; these aren't my ideas. There are probably exceptions, and obviously there'll always be a few players who do indeed engage in 'selfthink', and won't need to to tell them everything, and who will even help tell you what you should tell others (you can't know every nuance of every class and role, after all), and I think you should be happy if you have some of those. Maybe you have a whole raid of those, in which case you'd mock my post... but to that I'd say consider yourself lucky.

If you don't have a raid full of those guys thought, as long as your raiders are at least alert enough to not stand in fire after it has burned them a few times, and they can at least improve at least one thing about the way that they play at a time, you will gradually kill all heroic content this tier... though you may, like us, not hit 16/16 in time for 5.2, eh.

It is extremely important, though, that you encourage your players to communicate (ideally without having to be told to do so). Nairobi's post above sounds horrible to me. ~65 attempts in, and they still hadn't realized that they were doing it wrong? And nobody was talking about it, so they had to be asked directly what they were having problems with?

Sometimes you can tell what someone is doing wrong by looking at logs, but that isn't always the case, and if people don't tell you stuff spontaneously without being told to do so then you will often have to go through tons of avoidable grief because of it.

While there's alot of good general info, one thing you might want to do for bladelord in general, is run with 3 healers. Most guilds kill it with 3 the first time, unless their DPS is especially horrible and their healers are incredibly strong comparable. If you use the monk+disc, they can both "dps-heal" most of the damage (smartheals), and the paladin can make sure he tops off people who needs it. You also need a raid CD on every strike (we usually do spirit shell->barrier->spirit shell->rallying->spirit shell->barrier, you get the idea).

As for making people research etc themselves -if they don't want to, they're not going to. I'm in a top 100 guild, and we still have slacking members who does not bother reading up or researching. You're going to need top 20 to get rid of those :P.